Supermassive black holes.

A force to be reckoned with

Gravity is one of the universe's great mysteries. We decided to find out why.

Think you know what gravity is? Think again. New research is revealing how little we know about this most mysterious of forces.

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Artist's impression of the winds emanating from the supermassive black hole

Rapid changes point to origin of ultra-fast black hole winds

Astronomers have made the most detailed observation yet of an ultra-fast wind emanating from a Black Hole at a quarter of the speed of light. Using the European Space Agency (ESA)’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR telescopes, the scientists observed the phenomenon in an active galaxy known as IRAS 13224-3809.

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Revealed elongated filaments of hot gas found after enhancing the detail in Chandra X-ray images (purple), also showing the optical light galaxies in cluster (taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

Galactic ‘vapour trails’ uncovered in giant cluster

Astronomers have discovered enormous smooth shapes that look like vapour trails in a gigantic galaxy cluster. These ‘arms’ span half a million light years and provide researchers with clues to a billion years of collisions within the “giant cosmic train wreck” of the Coma cluster.

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